Share:

Related

Comments

I don’t get the tunnel. Everyone told them it was a bad idea. We KEPT voting it down. And yet the powers that be, rammed it through anyway, and now they find nobody wants it. Why isn’t corruption like this investigated and the guilty parties go to jail?

You owe $1,000 because you wagered on a candidate who lost 51 to 47. You should have sent a check to Darryl payable to Northwest Harvest on November 7th. Here we are 75 days later and you still have not met YOUR obligation.

Yes, we understand. Moral turpitude is not a bug with you, it’s a feature.

Write a check for $1,000 payable to Northwest Harvest and send it to Darryl and meet the obligation of your lost wager.

DETROIT — Federal prosecutors have filed a fraud charge against Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway, just a few days before she leaves the state’s highest court in a scandal involving the sale of a Detroit-area home and suspicious steps taken to conceal property in Florida. The charge was filed Friday as a criminal “information,” which means it was negotiated and that a guilty plea is expected in federal court. Defense attorney Steve Fishman declined to comment Saturday.

Hathaway is resigning Monday, months after a series of questionable real estate transactions first were revealed by a Detroit TV station. Hathaway and her husband, Michael Kingsley, deeded a Florida home to a relative while trying to negotiate a short sale on a house they couldn’t afford in Grosse Pointe Park.

Maybe she just didn’t understand the complexity of mortgage law in her state.

Don’t miss this tasty tidbit from the MI Democrat Party head concerning what the GOP governor should do:

Instead of beefing up the GOP majority until a special election can be held in 2014, Brewer said Snyder should appoint a Democrat to fill high court, which is technically nonpartisan.

“That would be a great gesture”, Brewer said.

’cause I’m sure a Democrat, in the same position, would be just as magnanimous.

Hmm, bug. That somehow reminds me of (un)SP. Oh, that’s right, their current thread about bed bugs and how the mayor isn’t doing enough about Seattle’s bed bug infestation. Bed bugs have a strange effect on Republicans for some reason. It leads to a call for more government. Jim Miller even demanded that Big Government fund the research to come up with a Bed-Bug-Detecto-Meter. MBS and I had some fun with this. Unfortunately, it appears that we killed the thread. Sad.

MBS sez, “you in the (un)SP peanut gallery who are overwrought about government inaction against private businesses not taking bed bugs seriously ought to reach out to your preferred candidate for President and get him to use his awesome leadership skills”

You might have something there, MBS. Maybe. As any God-fearing Republican knows, God works in mysterious ways. He chose Obama to save America from Republicans and now it appears that he might have given Mitt Romney a calling as well, to save Marriott Hotels from litigous mothers pissed off about bed bugs devouring their children.

We can all check in later and see how Mitt’s doing with his bed bug problems. By the way, a search for “Marriott bed bugs” is, well, disgusting, to say the least. Say, isn’t Marriott where Republicans always stay?

I was going to post snark about this but couldn’t find an angle. It’s an interesting comment. So I’ll just post it:

As for the discouragement Americans might feel in looking at the political bickering and persistent stalemates on Capitol Hill, Buffett sounded an optimistic tone, saying “what is right about America just totally dwarfs what’s wrong with Washington. 535 people are not going to mess up 315 million over time. I know it.”

@7 Steve, Nice pick-up on the Slick Willard association to the bed bug problem. Honestly, I had not even thought about that. Was just trying to get in a dig about the community organizer being able to solve problems while the ‘business leader’ can’t.

fyi – maybe you know this already but there already is a very effective Bed-Bug-Detecto-Meter. It’s called a dog. :-D

According to the Las Vegas Sun, State Assemblyman Steven Brooks was arrested with a loaded gun. He had threatened to shoot Speaker-elect Marilyn Kirkpatrick. He was apparently unhappy with his committee assignments.

He spent the night in custody, the Las Vegas-Review Journal reported.

Brooks is a Democratic assemblyman who represents North Las Vegas. He was first elected in 2010.

Carl, as you know the problem with money in politics isn’t unique to our state capital, but that does not mean that Inslee shouldn’t make a stand. Doing so would be worth far more to his re-election campaign than the dollars he gets by going along.

It doesn’t surprise me that Republicans would try to find another way to make sure your vote doesn’t count. They’ve tried quite a few gambits which were originally succesful until we caught on to their game. Among them: cordoning-off minority precints with police interrogating “suspects” or creating the impression that was their intent; creating illegal caging lists to de-register voters without notice to them, taking polling machines out of Democratic precincts and putting them in Republican precincts to ensure hours-long waits to vote in the Democratic precincts; using outside contracting firms to flood Democratic GTV campaign lines on election day in a denial-of-service attack; pushing for electronic voting machines which create no paper records and are subject to hacking by the company; etc.

Now that we are on to them, they have to try new stuff – otherwise they would lose just about every national election. They can’t just do away with the electoral college and go by popular vote – Democrats would have won in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012. So they will rely upon control of state offices to gerrymander Congressional Ditricts and then apportion the vote accordingly.

Of course, most Republicans don’t want THEIR vote apportioned by Congessional districts in red states. They only want it in blue states, where they lose the popular vote every time.

# 13 (continued): I have to disagree with him about Index Funds, which he recommended to the average person trying to invest their savings. Warren Buffet doesn’t have to pay the huge administrative expenses those fund managers collect from investors, all for not really doing anything other than mailing out statements once a quarter.

On average, those administrative expenses are about 1% per year (plus/minus .25%, depending upon the fund). So if I have 100K invested in my 401(K) account, they will take 1% ($1,000) for doing – nothing. Extra fees apply if I want to talk to a broker or get any additional assistance at all.

So if the stock market rises 4%, I only get 3%, after the fund manager administrative expense is taken into account. For an Index Fund, I will constantly be performing under the market at that point.

I’m pretty sure the GOP strongly supports keeping the Electoral College in place.

They can gerrymander all they want but it doesn’t change the number of electoral votes per state, and therefore doesn’t change national election results. Unless, by gerrymandering, you mean messing with the state lines.

This was one of those ‘See how many errors you can spot’ posts you sometimes write, isn’t it?

@12 It’s a constant in American politics that whichever party comes up second in a presidential election wants to meddle with (or eliminate) the Electoral College, just as every candidate who fails in a race against an incumbent subsequently issues shrill demands for term limits.

To both groups, the best response is “So you lost–and that’s your problem, not the country’s. Deal with it.”

@14 rhp6033, Didn’t read the Buffet piece, but my understanding from WB on investing is to invest in the things that you know, the products that you use, in companies near you.

I could cite numerous examples where that discipline has helped me, but I’ll just say that in addition to living in a marriage equality, marijuana decriminalized liberal paradise, we also live close by to some of the most dynamic companies on the planet.

I’ve made boat loads from my investments in Amazon and Microsoft over the years.

He formerly managed Fidelity’s Magellan Fund, back before it became so large and unwieldy. Actually, his investment returns and the fund popularity because of it are the reason the fund became so large and unwieldy.

I chose not to invest heavily in NW stocks. My professional life is already heavily invested here – if the local economy tanks it isn’t lost on me. To put a lot into MSFT and BA just weights me even more heavily in PacNW fortunes. I have a little MSFT, a little INTC, a lot of AMGN (which bought Immunex), and zero BA. I’m sure my mutual fund holdings have a fair amount of PacNW stocks. That’s plenty for me. I’ll leave the rest on the table.

Don’t talk to me like we can have a civil conversation. And I definitely don’t want to hear about money from you until you get your GD check book out and write a check for $1,000 payable to Northwest Harvest and send it to Darryl to make good on the wager you lost.

@14 rhp6033, Regarding the BS fees your company’s 401k management takes off the top, that’s the whole damn reason for the financial sector pushing to replace defined pension plans with 401ks. It is easier to fleece a lot of sheep than it is to fleece an investment professional measured on his or her job of producing returns.

And I’ve never gotten an answer from 401k administrator firms for why a selection of funds is limited. For the big boys, one side of the house offers some limited set of equities or funds and the other offers the full market. Chances are less expensively administered index funds are not available to you within your plan. That’s no accident.

We interrupt this comment thread to bring you a special announcement. Our exceedingly verbose and persistent poster of troll drivel, Kap’n Kornflake – – Serial Reneger with fantasies of pedophilia, has been stymied by the simple yes or no question @27.

@30 Steve, The way the pirate capitalists move teams from one city to another ain’t so bad. What’s bad is that so many think that publicly funding the arena for millionaires to play in is not only a good idea, but a better idea than using that money to fund our schools, or building our roads, or providing a public service.

@28. Typical Serial “Reneger with gay fantasies” Conn post. Smear and innuendo but no actual facts and data. Just fox like tactics of “People are saying that [Insert Obama admin bashing as if it was truth statement here.]” It even starts with “Word on the national security street is that…”

# 26: Yep, our 401(K) has a very limited selection of funds, with about 2/3 of them being essentially bond funds, disguised under one name or another. Only two are general-purpose mutual funds investing primarily in U.S. stocks, a couple of “international funds”, and a couple are “lifestyle funds” (meaning at my age they would invest almost entirely in stocks), etc. My choice of annual management fees among the two U.S. stock funds is about .95% and 1.10% (if my memory serves correct, I’m not going to take the time to look it up right now).

I think Roger Rabbit is right – stay away from mutual funds and buy individual stocks, especially dividend-producing stocks which have been around for a while. I’ve reduced my 401(K) contribution and I’ve began focusing on that strategy by putting the money in an I.R.A.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t work for Boeing, but I DO work WITH Boeing and with airlines. I can’t safely invest in Boeing because I have too much inside information. I don’t disclose any of that here until it’s generally available in the news media.

@37 rhp6033, Index funds are a great thing and unlike 30 years ago there’s a whole helluva lot of choice. Paying anywhere near 1% for “management” though is outrageous. As an aside, I once asked a broker if he’d be willing to reimburse me 3% of any money his recommendations lost me, and as you can guess I pushed the point. It was too funny.

I WILL predict that Boeing will buy a couple of luxory boxes at the arena when it’s built. There’s not much to do for Boeing to interview clients during the winter months – Seahawk games are few and far between, and non-existent if they don’t have home field advantage for the playoffs. They have luxory boxes at the football and baseball stadium, so I expect they will do the same for NBA games (they used to have Sonic boxes as well).

Although it seems the cost might be prohibitive, it’s not that bad considering that they can entertain a couple dozen airline people in a single box, with catering available. Taking them to dinner at at a five-star restaurant including appetizers, cocktails, three-course dinner, desert, plus wine, is pretty expensive by itself.

I did get a laugh out of watching a group of young airline engineers from an Asian country at an NBA game. A couple of well-endowned young women with plunging necklines were sitting right in front of the box. These young guys, all in their 20’s, didn’t know anything about NBA basketball – but they all had their cell phones out, taking pictures of the girls.

# 39: My wife worked as an administrative assistant for a big brokerage firm, before the post-9/11 cutbacks. It was a real eye-opener for us. The mutual funds would come into the office regularly, giving a lunchtime presentation and showering the brokers with gifts to get them to recommend their funds to their clients. They usually had lunch brought in for everyone in the office on the days they were there.

So – is your broker recommending a mutual fund based on it’s expected performance and costs, or is he thinking about the golf game, dinner, and cocktails they treated him two yesterday?

# 41: Sure, if you have the time and money to sort out what you know vs. what was disclused in filings. Top executives hire people to do that for him.

Bill Gates resolved the issue by simply announcing, years in advance, how much stock he would be selling and when. So it didn’t matter whether there was good news or bad news around the time of the sale, it was unrelated to plans he had disclused publically three years previously. It’s a pretty good way to avoid getting sued – assuming you have the money to use that type of strategy, in any event.

# 43: That’s a good example. I knew from walking the factory floor and talking with the machinists and ship-side support the condition of the planes, well before Boeing announced the delays. I also knew that Boeing was having substantial problems with it’s supplier base that wasn’t going to be fixed in just a few weeks or months. So if I had purchased Boeing stock based on that info, I would be vulnerable.

Once I confronted a Boeing mid-level exec about problems, and he demanded to know how I got my information. I think he wanted to crack down on who was feeding me information. I just pointed out that Everett is a “company town”, and you can learn a lot just by going to a restaurant and keeping your ears open. Just about everyone there either works for Boeing, has a relative working for Boeing, or knows someone who does, and everyone complains about their work.

MikeBoyScoutFucker, that’s two references to my genitalia in very short order. Doesn’t do much for your efforts to convince people you aren’t into little boys, especially when you speak so knowledgeably about small testes.

@48. Now stop that. Just because Serial “Reneger with gay fantasies” Conn cannot make angry posts without resorting to using gay slurs, and when confronted with facts, he tries to change the subject by insulting someone else, is no reason to cast aspersions that he’s hung like a mole.

Like most everything else, Kap’n Kornflake – – Serial Reneger with fantasies of pedophilia, doesn’t understand the difference between anatomy and sexual behavior.

Kap’n, I don’t need to convince anybody about anything dealing with my personal behavior. You, on the other hand, often comment using descriptive comments about sexual activity with men and boys and gay slurs.

Ask YLB to do a pull for you of all the times you’ve done so.

It is a pity you don’t have the stones to make good your obligation for the wager you lost, nor do you have the cajones to answer the question I asked you on this post.

But you’re being a worthless POS twisted concern troll is not news here.

“Proud of my husband and the Pats. By the way, if anyone is bored, please go to Ray Lewis’ Wikipedia page. 6 kids 4 wives. Acquitted for murder. Paid a family off. Yay! What a hall of fame player! A true role model!,” the former Miss Hooters wrote on her Facebook page following the Patriots’ 28-13 loss to Baltimore.

@1 For the same reason sports palaces get built at taxpayer expense after losing at the polls by huge margins: One, someone makes a lot of money from it (by taking yours); and two, dollars count and votes don’t.

Classic words from the moronic right wing witch hunter in the mad House:

“The words were code for a progressive agenda. I’m hoping that the president will recognize that compromise should have been the words for today, and they clearly weren’t,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a frequent Obama critic who has zealously pursued a contempt case against Attorney General Eric Holder.

Speaking of projections, and Serial’s demands that all government projections match reality to a “T”:

Rumsfield and Cheney both said that Iraqi oil money would pay for the war in Iraq. Any word on how that’s going? How much Iraqi oil mony have we received in payment for the money we spent there since the invasion?

Roger Rabbit Commentary: Abortion is contrary to my personal moral beliefs, even though I think there’s already too damn many of you humans on the planet (but there can never be too many rabbits!), but this is the sort of moral decision everyone has to make for himself.

That New Mexico shooting was a domestic. A 15-year-old kid shot his parents and 3 siblings. But that wasn’t all; he had big plans:

“Nehemiah told police he shot his father multiple times with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle with a scope, according to the document, then said he reloaded the weapons with the intention of driving to an area where he could shoot more people. He told police that he wanted to die exchanging fire with law enforcement.”

Well, that didn’t take long. The decision on final approval now rests with the Obama administration. The State Department is expected to decide within the next few months whether to permit the project to go forward — Heineman’s approval puts Obama in a difficult political spot. The president had previously cited the Nebraska’s concerns about the pipeline as a key obstacle to approving the pipeline. At the same time, the president was able assuage the concerns of major environmental groups who not only voiced concern about the potential impact of a spill but also the emissions created by extracting and refining oil from what are known as oil sands in Canada. After Obama in his inaugural address pledged to take action on climate change, the Sierra Club said it was “heartened” by Obama’s remarks and again urged the administration to reject “the dangerous tar sands pipeline.”

You want a pipeline crossing our country so that Canada can sell oil to China? What, for a handful of American jobs and profits for global corporations which have no loyalty whatsofuckingever to America?

Ryan, the GOP’s 2012 vice-presidential nominee and his party’s leader when it comes to pressing for federal entitlement reform, contended that Obama made a “switcheroo” in his speech by suggesting that Republicans have referred to beneficiaries of those programs as “takers.” In reality, he said, that term refers to recipients of welfare and other non-“earned” entitlements.

Ah of course. His own mom gets Social Security.. She paid into the system. She’s can’t be a “taker”. But what about this:

But when you look at the fight that we’re in here in Capital Hill, it’s a tough fight. It’s a very important fight. But we need more people on our side to fight this fight. That is why there is no more fight that is more obvious between the differences of these two conflicts than Social Security. Social Security right now is a collectivist system, it’s a welfare transfer system.

These idiots can’t seem to empty a gun completely, or load it, without shooting themselves or someone else. And they should be able to carry a firearm without any government regulation?

I got a kick out of the comment in one article that a gun-owner was shot while loading his piece upon exiting a gun show. The article pointed out that loaded firearms are prohibited in the gun show. Yet we can’t regulate people whether people should have guns if they don’t even know how to properly expel a round from the chamber to ensure it’s not loaded? (Hint: taking the magazine out doesn’t work).

# 72: What gets me so upset about idiots who don’t know how to handle firarms, but insist that their 2nd Amendment rights trump any reasonable precautions against innocent people being killed, is that I knew more at eight years old about firearms safety than the average gun-owner knows now. Which says something about the level of intelligence/education of the average gun owner.

A pipeline system running at 50% capacity. Refining company lawsuits for jacking up prices and underdelivery. Native Americans getting the shaft. Massive cost overruns. I don’t know. Maybe we should bet $1,000 whether or not oil goes to China. Just kidding.

My bad about Oscar. I make mistakes, but that one was fucking awful. I’m thinking the other team might have been San Francisco, before they traded Wilt. I did a quick search to see if there was any record of that game but I couldn’t find anything, not even searching the Seattle Times archives.

So having armed guards didn’t work. the republican’s answer is arm all the students if they want. Did they not notice or care that the people in the crossfire are the ones who were hurt. More Guns. Guns. Guns.

Actually, Bob, I was just reading how in a 2011 interview with Starr Parker, Puddy’s old flame, Ryan described 70% of the nation as “takers”. For a so-called numbers guy, he’s not terribly consistent with numbers, wouldn’t you say? Not nearly so much as he’s been with stating his view that America consists solely of makers and takers. Really, Bob, anybody who reduces the very complex into binary thought deserves to be shunned and ridiculed. Anyways, the wingnut study he apparently used to come up with to stoke the base with that high percentage included the cost of national defense, of all things, divied up among us based on income or some such nonsense. Apparently all’s fair when you’re trying to turn the nation’s social safety nets into Wall Street profits.

I recall watching Goodrich on TV leading UCLA to a win in a close game with Seattle U in the regionals on their way to the 1964 NCAA title. Later I watched the championship game. Like everybody else, I had no idea that that was the beginning of what is probably the most remarkable run of team success in sports history.

@70 No one is saying Keystone XL shouldn’t be built. Only greedheads and Cereal Bob are stupid enough to think building it over America’s most important aquifer is a good idea. Keystone has always had an alternate route. They’ve never believed this route would be approved. The pipeline will be built, on schedule, by the alternate route — wait and see. Oh, and for what it’s worth, it will create 20 permanent jobs. These days, pipelines are automated and computers run them. The only time humans are needed is when (not if, but when) something breaks.

WASHINGTON — Ask a Senate Republican if he or she supports an assault weapons ban and you’ll likely get a “no.” But ask about tighter background checks — one of few items in President Barack Obama’s gun violence package with a shot at passing Congress — and you’ll likely get a vague response about needing more information, if you get a response at all.

“Uh, I don’t know what you mean,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who then ended the conversation by turning around and walking into a room where senators were having lunch, closing the door behind him.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....29562.html

Please Donate

I appreciate feeling appreciated. Also, money.

Currency:

Amount:

Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?

Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!

Search HA

Follow Goldy

HA Commenting Policy

It may be hard to believe from the vile nature of the threads, but yes, we have a commenting policy. Comments containing libel, copyright violations, spam, blatant sock puppetry, and deliberate off-topic trolling are all strictly prohibited, and may be deleted on an entirely arbitrary, sporadic, and selective basis. And repeat offenders may be banned! This is my blog. Life isn’t fair.